


Victory

by venndaai



Category: Picnic at Hanging Rock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Ambiguous Relationships, F/F, Trick or Treat: Trick, star wars: the old republic - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 20:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16332641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: Three students vanish from Hester Appleyard's Sith Academy.





	Victory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> sorry I didn't realize at first this wasn't gifted to you, it might be related to the reveals bug or I might just be forgetful, sigh.

It was not the Academy on Korriban. The planet, while located within Imperial space, was far from the historic core of Sith power. Appleyard Academy was located on a dry, scrubby part of the smaller continent. It was where the Empire sent those children who were highly born but weak in the Force, lowly born but strong in the Force, or just inconvenient when visible.

Overseer Appleyard was not happy with her selection of students, but she understood that was the price to be paid for privacy and security.

She stood on the highest balcony of the Academy, and looked out over the land, and watched storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

  


Instructor Lumley said, “what is the code of the Sith?”

The students obediently began the chant. Irma mouthed it silently, mind drifting. Late afternoon sun poured into the hall from a high window, illuminating the two girls in front of her. Marion glowed, the side planes of her face just visible from where Irma sat, warmed by that red sun.

Miranda was staring at nothing. The pen in front of her levitated, spun gently in the dusty air.

  


_Peace is a lie; there is only passion._

  


Overseer Appleyard sat at her desk to go through the daily paperwork. The holocrons under her desk whispered at her, but she told herself she was good at ignoring them now.

  


The rich black of the acolyte’s robes didn’t flatter Irma’s complexion. She consoled herself that the color made Miranda look sallow, too. Irma dreamed of red, of capes and shoulder pads and spikes. Of walking into a room and having it fall silent, every mind focused on her, their desire and fear vibrating through the Force. Not a room on Dromund Kaas, but somewhere else, somewhere beautiful and sophisticated, Alderaan maybe, or Corellia.

“Won’t your family want you to stay near the seat of power?” Miranda asked, mouth tilted, voice as light and distant as ever. “Play the game of backstabbing and maneuvering, make your way closer to the Dark Council?”

Irma wrapped a ringlet around one finger, and imagined pulling the air from Miranda’s throat. She could say, Don’t speak of things you don’t understand, provincial girl, but Miranda would laugh at her. “They don’t care,” Irma said. “Mother’s got all the power she could want, and Father’s happy doing whatever he wants on some miserable rock parsecs from anywhere.” She looked sideways at Miranda. “Anyway I don’t have to be on Dromund Kaas to get whatever _I_ want. I’ll be a Darth before the decade’s out, just wait.”

“Hm,” Miranda said, dismissively, and pushed herself off her bunk, floating towards the door.

“Off to play with your little beasts again?” Irma called, but too late; she was gone. Probably out to the cliffs where she kept the creatures she’d found, twisted by the Dark Side, and bent to her will. She’d return, Irma knew, in the middle of the night, bare feet caked in red dust.

Irma rolled over onto her side.

The sound of the door opening. “Where’d Miranda go?” Marion asked, but she sounded distracted, uninterested. Irma made a dismissive noise into her pillow. Marion sighed. A distracted, lovesick sigh. Irma felt her anger rising again.

 _Remember the oath,_ she told herself. _This place, all these lessons about cruelty and pain, that’s not what you want. That’s not who you’re going to be._

 

_Through passion, I gain strength._

 

“A trip to the ruins,” Overseer Appleyard said. “It will be educational. Take only the seniors.”

Dianne hesitated for a moment before speaking. “Are you certain? I have felt a great presence there.”

“Of course you have,” Hester snapped, irritated. “I wouldn’t have hired you if you weren’t sensitive.” _And desperate, that blue skin and those red eyes losing you potential employers._

“I did not mean-” Dianne took a moment to catch her breath, and Hester fancied the woman was glaring at her though it was difficult to tell with those solid red eyes. “It might be too dangerous for the children to handle.”

“Then we thin the herd,” Hester said, turning on her heel to face the office window, away from Dianne. “That is how it is done on Korriban, after all.”

 

_Through strength, I gain power._

 

“I cannot live in between,” Miranda murmured, and the ruins, the forest, the Rock whispered back to her. She reached out.

 

Time stopped.

  


Hester sensed the calamity almost when it happened, felt the dark ripples in the Force, and knew her enemies had finally found her.

Just as she’d known the moment Arthur had died.

He laughed softly behind her, and she refused to spin around.

  


“Marion might be a bastard, but her father is on the Dark Council,” Hester said, coldly, crisply, grimly. “Irma’s mother is not, but she controls half the wealth on Dromund Kaas. Miranda’s family is of no account, but several Darths had expressed interest in her as an apprentice. We are at war. Our youth are vital to our future.”

Dianna’s face hadn’t changed, but then it was sometimes hard for Hester to identify her expressions, because of those pupilless red eyes.

“I know you are extremely aware of all this, Madame Poiters.” Hester leaned forward. “So why are you telling me you’ve lost my three most promising seniors?”

The red eyes flickered closed, and the expression changed from exaggerated misery to outright grief. _Oh, cut the performance,_ Hester thought, exasperated, but then again everything here was performance. It was her own fault she’d grown too good at seeing through it.  


 

Sarah arranged the holocrons on the main staircase, and sat in the center of them, waiting for the headmistress to enter the hallway, listening to the whispers.

 

_Through power, I gain victory._

 

Hester sat across from Dianne, the two of them alone at the long and shadowed table. Hester smiled, and sipped her wine. It tasted like dust. The anger and fear rolling off of her dining companion was much sweeter.

She did not know why she had lied about little Sarah. Weak students died all the time at the Korriban Academy, and no one minded as long as it wasn’t a witnessed murder- and even then, no one would make too much of a fuss over a mere ward, who wasn’t close to being an heir to anything. Or so Hester had heard. Of course she didn’t know from personal experience, despite the forged graduation statue in her office.

But there had never been a death at her Academy. It was too messy. Too wasteful. It spoke poorly of the control the headmistress had over her domain. It was weak. Hester looked directly at Dianne as she brought her fork up to her mouth. Dianne’s hatred was invigorating, but Hester recoiled at the thought of someone like Dianne ever finding her weak.

“What’s necessary above all else is to attract the right sort of student,” Hester said. “And the right sort of teacher, of course.”

“I have been offered a position with Imperial Intelligence,” Dianne said. She was trembling. Defiant but afraid. Pathetic. The sight of her disgusted Hester as much as the maggots she saw everywhere now. “Now that there is an alliance with the Ascendancy, they are in need of translators.”

Hester dropped her fork. Dianne’s hands flew to her neck. She struggled against an invisible assailant. Hester watched, almost not realizing that she was the one squeezing the air from the woman’s lungs. She caught herself, and opened her clenched fist. “Do you think I care?” she hissed over the sound of Dianne’s wheezing. “You lost my girls.”

“Why do you care?” Dianne whispered, voice hoarse but indignant. “You hated them! None of you Sith know the value of children!”

“Get out,” Hester said. “I expect you to be gone in the morning.”

“I expect I will be,” Dianne replied. Hester shut her eyes, erasing Dianne from her image of the world; but she was only replaced by Arthur, grinning horribly at her. Damn it all, this would have to be dealt with. A clean sweep.

  


_Through victory, my chains are broken._

 

Hester could not avoid the ruins forever, not when she might find relief there from the ghosts leeching at her spirit- though she knew she was just as likely to find death, or worse, eternity.

She felt the difference as soon as she entered the woods at the foot of the Rock. The disturbance in the Force was old, and snarled in complicated knots. She stepped carefully around the treacherous eddies and quicksands in the fabric of reality.

When she put a foot up on the Rock, she started sensing their presence. As she climbed higher it grew stronger, and she could hear echoes of their voices, see scraps of black robe disappearing behind stone columns. The lost students. Hester resisted the urge to call out to them. She would find them soon. They would be punished severely, for causing so much trouble.

 

_The Force shall free me._


End file.
